Consciousness and Cognition最新文献

This study investigated the intraindividual stability and reliability of the three core aspects of the Selfhood triumvirate ('Self', 'Me', and 'I') as well as their mutual relationship (the Selfhood triumvirate configuration/pattern) by measuring the within-subjects reproducibility of functional integrity within three operational modules (OMs) of the brain's self-referential network (SRN), each associated with one of these aspects, upon repeat testing (test-retest reliability). Our findings revealed statistically robust, moderate-to-high intraindividual test-retest reliability for the individual aspects ('Self', 'Me', and 'I'), and exceptionally high reliability for their overall functional configuration (i.e., the relative proportion of expression among the three aspects). Importantly, the analyses did not provide evidence that the duration between assessments, participants' age, or the presence of somatic or psychopathological conditions moderated these reliability measures. Taken together, the results suggest that the 'Self', 'Me', and 'I' aspects of the Selfhood triumvirate, as well as their overall functional configuration, exhibit trait-like properties, albeit to varying degrees, measured as the stability of functional integrity within the corresponding SRN OMs across time, age, and normative versus pathological conditions. Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are discussed.

Intertemporal choice exhibits systematic differences between gain and loss contexts; however, the computational mechanisms underlying these differences and their neural correlates remain incompletely understood. In the present study, fifty-three healthy adults completed a delay discounting task involving both gain and loss contexts while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). At the behavioral level, the proportion of choosing smaller-sooner options in the gain context was significantly higher than the proportion of choosing larger-later options in the loss context. Drift diffusion model (DDM) analyses revealed that gain-loss context was significantly associated with multiple components of decision dynamics, including higher drift rates, stronger starting-point biases, and longer non-decision times in the gain context, whereas no significant contextual differences were observed in decision boundary. At the neural level, intertemporal choices in the gain context were accompanied by increased activation in the bilateral hippocampus and right insula. Together, these findings provide converging computational and neural evidence for gain-loss asymmetries in intertemporal decision making.

Reminiscence priming (priming from recall of the past) and semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming (priming from general information processing) have been shown to prime involuntary autobiographical memory production in the laboratory and everyday life. As these priming phenomena involve overt (reminiscence priming) or covert (semantic-to-autobiographical priming) autobiographical memory activations, questions naturally arise about which one would lead to stronger involuntary memory production. For various reasons, we hypothesized that despite this difference, both priming phenomena will lead to equivalent involuntary memory production. We tested this hypothesis by comparing reminiscence priming to semantic-to-autobiographical priming on the vigilance task (an involuntary memory task). Participants recalled memories from their past (the autobiographical group) or rated words on the familiarity of their meaning (the semantic group) and were then engaged in the vigilance task, where in between detecting the presence of vertical lines on numerous different slides, they were to report the experience of spontaneous thoughts or memories. The results showed that both groups produced equivalent primed involuntary memory production on the vigilance task. We argue that the results suggest that each of these priming phenomena have an equal likelihood of causing involuntary memory production in everyday life, and that covert memory activations can be as strong or overt activations.

Our aim is to explore neural network mechanisms for phenomenal binding, i.e. combining micro-units of information into the macro-scale conscious experience common in human phenomenology. Such experiential complexity is a key feature that aspiring theories of phenomenal consciousness must account for. We motivate phenomenal binding in a way that aids translation to computational neuroscience, connecting it to related but distinct topics: functional binding, the hard problem of consciousness, and unity of consciousness. We define a deliberately simple artificial neural network (ANN) model, in order to explore its full space of options for implementing phenomenal binding. We demonstrate that the model can implement functional binding but fails to implement phenomenal binding while also maintaining key distinctions between unconscious and conscious processing. We use this set-up to structure possible solutions to p-binding based on which parts of the model they elaborate or which parts of the problem they reject. Several established theories of consciousness map onto our solution structure, such as the aggregation of nodes into complexes applied by Integrated Information Theory (IIT), entanglement collapse in Orch-OR, or the exploitation of field structures in Conscious Electromagnetic Information Theory (CEMI). We also discuss possible solutions open to other theories, such as Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and Dendritic Integration Theory (DIT). Nonetheless, at present, each solution route needs further work, identifying opportunities for researchers to enrich existing theories to account properly for phenomenal binding.

Rational decision-making often depends on coordinating sequences of mental actions, each with a distinctive phenomenology. Feelings of effort and fluency are central to many theoretical accounts of cognitive control. In the present study (N = 308), we examined how different mental actions-focusing, inhibiting, deciding, visualizing, visualizing alternatives, seeing, believing, and remembering-and their associated phenomenology relate to one another and to varying levels of control. Self-reported mental effort was positively associated with self-reported mental control, with this relationship stronger under higher than lower cognitive-load conditions. Effort was also positively related to control across all eight mental actions, with no clear division between more passive and more active forms. By contrast, the way effort and control combined to produce feelings of successful performance depended on the type of mental action, reflecting a passive-active distinction. This suggests that control and effort have a nuanced relationship to each other and with eliciting targeted mental actions.

Sense of Agency (SoA) is the experience of control over one's actions and, through them, events in the outside world. Experimental research indicates that SoA is inferred based on different agency cues. We investigated whether younger (18-28 years) and older (65-75 years) adults differ in their use of three of these cues, namely action-effect congruency, affective valence of the effect, and temporal relation between action and effect. In an experiment, participants first learned to associate keypresses with positively and negatively valenced effects (positive or negative smileys). Subsequently, participants performed the same keypresses. Keypresses were, after different intervals, followed by positive or negative smileys. Smileys were either congruent or incongruent with the previously acquired action-effect associations. Participants were told that the occurrence of a smiley was either caused by their keypress or was automatically generated by the computer independent of their keypress. In each trial, participants indicated how sure they are that they caused the effect (authorship rating). Authorship ratings were higher for congruent than for incongruent effects and for positively than for negatively valenced effects in both age groups. This indicates that the use of action-effect congruency and affective valence of the effect as agency cues are age-independent. Authorship ratings decreased with increasing action-effect interval in younger adults, but not in older adults. This indicates that older adults may rely less on temporal cues, presumably due to age-related differences in cue integration. In conclusion, temporal agency cues are used differently across different age groups.